UC notes - 1

You are standing beneath a ladder. It is unlucky.



This will be slightly distorted because of the writer being drowned in the meme river, but you must forgive the basal fear of the analyser of being analysed by the analysed entity. Imagine reading something that is a test on you without you knowing it? Oh my god! Freaky eh? Yeah well, as long as what you are analyzing is freaker that you, its fine… or so you think. The movies are freaky. It’s a Farce… a huge Farce… something very real… see you watch a wide bunch of movies for a paper, that claims to enable you to understand cinema at the end of it, that become a perfect study that the makers are totally unaware of… you see the ripple of ideas, that streak of method passing by, that huge chunk of bullshit caught on and hung on to by everybody… you see this as a virtual map of the movie maker’s locations are laid out to you across the earth. And here, is what I am currently envisioning:



[Upload photoshopped image tomorrow]



You see its true, an ape like me can learn to be human too, yeah. Now these are the movies I had/ have watched, that ended up in me being made to feel like I needed to bring about that map. Not only have these movies analysed me, they have hypnotized me, and have elevated me to their level of freakishness. Therefore, we very seriously come to a fucking hilarious conclusion, please be polite enough to laugh, that these movies are best rated, in their levels of freakishness. Agreed? Are you laughing? Is it a farce? It is time we go:



Requiem for a dream by Darren Aronofsky

Freakometer: 0.2 micrograms/10


Farce-O-Sensor: overdose/10 – the movie itself manages to somehow get drawn into the selfsame vortex of decay as the characters… like the entire cast and crew were drugged.

Ripple of ideas: It is my guess that a lot of psychoanalytical research has been conducted about the affect of visual and auditory stimulations on the brain. This is then used to as a hypodermic needle. However, the kind of drug usage depicted in the movie, is not only restricted to a narrow band of geographical users, or in some cases, extremists cults only, but the depiction of each individual drug usage varies in a spectacular panorama, making the movie very geographically incoherent. And most importantly, this movie, manages to be one of the most unscientific depiction of the effects of drug usage possible. The very poster shows the famous dilation of the pupil two second shot, which for your information is one, digitally done, and two, unscientifically done, even the reflection of the light curves with the pupil, and here: purposefully done. The third is vital, because, as the viewer can imagine once it is pointed out, that the stress was given more towards the psychological effects of a visual of a pupil getting dilated, as compared to a physical response that a doped guy would have. People do say that “the movie made me feel doped”, so, you can argue as to how a psychological response of people feeling doped can be attained by visual stimulation of not being doped? The dilating pupils, are not meant to make you feel doped, they are there for making you mistake something that you will feel because of the dilated pupils, for the feeling of being doped. The human body, dilates the pupils of the eyes, when it feels either horny or terrified. That is why Hitchcock uses chicks in nightgowns (makes you horny right?) and alien sounds (makes you terrified right?). Requiem for a dream makes you 1) horny and terrified and 2) makes being horny and terrified your dope. And there you have your flow of ideas…



Ideastreak Navigator: Twice the usual dosage/10

From Hitchcock to Aronofsky… a splash in the meme river… and idea that circulated… make the audience horny and terrified… they love it. But wait, you have now come a full circle here… enjoying being horny and terrified, is an idea you had on your own, before these movies came along. It is something that you already had in you. It was a voice in your head, going “oh fuck!” right about now… It is the freaking movie analyzing you… this is where requiem for a dream analyzed you, this is where it was a test, requiem for a dream wasn’t even trying to make you mistake being horny and terrified for being doped… it was trying to make you REALISE that things that make you horny and terrified, anything, is your dope… you need it, and you depend upon it for your very existence. And that is jolly well amazing isn’t it… imagine the thoughts behind a film doing something like that… raised you a little up the freak ladder didn’t it? This man, to put it dramatically, but aptly here, has magic and method. The method, is by the way, another splash in the meme river by a certain Mr. Eisenstein. And another streak comes into Aronofsky from the great Godart, crafter of another freaky nightmare.



Methodstreak Navigator: Prescription outdated/10

Confused… incoherent, rampant and self-immolating – that was the kind of treatment given in the movie. It is a disgusting show, it does not make you think, it merely remains shameless as it puts up a vulgar display of degradation. It makes you want to defend yourself, to escape, it manages to return you so much to your instincts that you cannot really think. You don’t stop eating the popcorn midway to your mouth and go “oh fuck! – I understand this shit now!” while watching this movie, you don’t watch this movie with popcorn at all, and any popcorn you have eaten in the recent past, is liable to come right back up. It makes you want to curl up in that fetal position and forget the world. And there is a method it goes about to do exactly this… content analyze the term “hip-hop montage” if you have all the time in the universe, and make a freaking movie out of it if you will, but for now understand that this is one of the many techniques used in this production. A Montage, will be covered later, in a discussion of Eisenstein’s own films, but here is a short sum up anyway: you know those slow mellow and molding background sounds of the old films right? How they can uplift you or make you experience that particular deep, beautiful sadness where tears trickle out of your eyes, an upper and a downer… these sounds become referential leading to sounds that made you feel patriotic (march drums), feel expectant (trumpets), feel jubilant (cheering) – all examples of extremely basic sounds causing terribly complex feelings… now imagine a series of such suggestive sounds in rapid succession. Please don’t imagine raggasex, it is a good song, but instead imagine anything hip hop… the pace of it, the trippy walk, that extra bling – accompany it with rapidly changing visuals, and viola! A hip-hop montage unfolds. That is the method, but the magic still needs to be explained to be fully comprehended… that will be understood in the next section which happens to be:



That huge chunk of bullshit:

The entire movie, is one huge chunk of the aforementioned substance. Everyone is extremely satisfied by bullshit. Everyone requires those basic things in the need pyramid, and it was impolite to talk about this in polite society till a freak like Godard came along and packaged it in a nice digestive pill to the apparently philosophical section of the society. For these people, had been drugged by their politeness to such an extent, that they had totally forgotten those things at the bottom of the pyramid… they were out of touch with themselves, empty shells content analyzing each other without consent, and Godard sprang up with the hypodermically induced drug called existentialism, which was a mighty ship in the existentialism river, and became a predominant idea in society, but remember how it came about? That was the bullshit. The movie fell into a trap it shouldn’t have fallen into. No matter how well the lighting is, or how cleanly the actors have been scrubbed, the depiction of naked bodies on screen does only one thing to you… porn is porn is porn… you have to understand things for what they are… no film maker can counteract responses four million years in the making.



Bright idea for further reading: Look up how Pythagorean themes have played a role in the movie.


Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein




Freakometer: Men and Maggots/10



Farce-O-Sensor: Drama at the Harbour
None actually. This is a movie that is almost revered. It is a treasure. Only it had some troubles getting around… banned in different places, it was seen only by a set of very select people… it was like an early art film.



Ideastreak Navigator:
Yes, it is slightly comical. And slightly exploitative. Now, notice the shots of the ship in Battleship Potemkin. All grand and shiney and powerful. It is a sleek and dangerous machine. Now notice the shots taken of the people of Battleship Potemkin. That is grisly and murky and rotting. What is this? A perfect society fuelled by imperfect individuals? The might of the ones in power leaving their foundations shaky? A foreshadowing, a clue to the plight of the poor sailors? It is a proposition, one must express through the art, or so thought Eisenstein. It was an idea pretty popular in those times. The people were what mattered all over the world, not only in Japan, note, admirers of Mr. Kurosawa. There is no protagonist in Battleship Potemkin. A different kind of idea was propagated by the film… the film was never really appreciated for its ideas, it was appreciated for the techniques used to portray those ideas. It was the precursor to what would end up with later film makers studying how to influence moods – something that Eisenstein seems to have an instinctive knack for. However, another trick pulled here is the distancing of the audience from the happening… the story plays out like a documentary, you do not relate to it personally. This is a conscious effort to allow the audience to objectively judge the ongoing on screen. There is, after all no protagonist in Battleship Potemkin. Except the dead man who calls for justice.



Methodstreak Navigator:
The Odessa staircase is a famous scene in cinema history… have you noticed, that Eisenstein has more famous scenes in each movie than other directors? Like usually, there is one famous scene in each film like… there are so many of them in Battleship Potemkin… its weird. And these are weird scenes because they are remembered to be different, because the montage was not the only technique developed by Eisenstein, a far more subtly but important technique was the idea of editing the film… he was a master editor, and he came up with the idea of shooting a film out of chronological sequence… this allowed for memorable sequences like the Odessa Staircase to be filmed even when they were not planned in the original script. And developing the process of editing was probably the thing that made him such a master at the montage too, because then one understands when to cut a shot, for how long our attention stays on each shot, what area of the screen draws the attention of your eyes… Eisenstein could afford to make the film by reacting to its influence on himself, this probably greatly enriched his ability to come up with montages, that had a particular influence on anyone. In the staircase sequence for example, the cuts between the child and the marchers and the mother shows a rhythmic increase from a dull foreboding to a heavy anticipation where the marchers will march right over the people. After the pace picks up, it climaxes in a horrible shot, from the point of view of the gun. This was how the movie managed to convey what it wanted to convey, which was:



That huge chunk of bullshit:
Rendezvous with a squadron… a bunch of half hearted, false and made up criticisms spoiling the essence of something that never needed to be there in the first place. The odessa stairacase sequence was carefully planned so that the Czar would be demonized, it was the only sequence in the movie that was made up and had no basis in the real uprising at Battleship Potemkin. The whole montage thing that this guy had going - didn't work. Consider the points for yourself please, I have a suspicion they will have changed how they read to me by the time I finish watching the next film.